The laughter of foxes, second edition a study of ted hughes (liverpool university press liverpool english texts studies

Ironically, the two works that received most of the belated acclaim, Birthday Letters and Tales from Ovid, are not part of the main body of Hughes’ achievement, since, splendid as they a

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published 2006 by

LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS

4 Cambridge Street, Liverpool L69 7ZU

Copyright © 2000, 2006 Keith Sagar

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All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers

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Epigraph vi

A Timeline of Hughes’ Life and Work, by Ann Skea xv

Chapter One The Mythic Imagination 1

Chapter Two From Prospero to Orpheus 36

Chapter Three The Evolution of ‘The Dove Came’ 87

Chapter Four From World of Blood to World of Light 104

Contents

by Mark Hinchliffe

For Ted Hughes – A Thanksgiving

1 Hearing your voice

and now the fox

keeps walking out of

the darkness into my head

2 A class of children,

held by The Iron Man,

acted the story

One barely able to read,

who hardly spoke,

jumped on the desk

and switched the blackboard

light on and off

to be the Iron Man’s eyes

He held chalk between his fingers,

and crawled around the floor

as he pieced himself together

Later he wrote:

‘I aket as the Iron Man we had

the lit on and off then I fell off

the besg I had chars on top of

me it look riyel then I got

togeser a gen

I lad in the fiver three tames

and the jogen lad in the sun

three tames he give in I wan

I was singing in the sky’

And Ariel sang to me,

Crouched on his shoulders

3 At Lumb Bank

you read your journal poems

about sheep, lambs, cows,

ravens, death, births

Persephone walked

across the room,

and sang into

my ear

of Spring’s return

4 You stand over the pool,

draw pictures

with your staff

you lift them out,

shimmering rainbows, mirrors

they are food and drink,

they are our parents,

our children

the pictures change,

and we are changed

A caged jaguar sends

his spirit into

a dancing boy

who seeds the wasteland

A burning fox melts

into the laughter of foxes

You stand over the pool,

and every third thought

And you bury your books

deep into the body of England,where they are carried

by rivers,

emerging again,

looking all around,

rubbing their eyes,

looking for places

to sink their roots,

like the piper’s lost children,like leaves stretching

from a green head

Ted Hughes is, I believe, the greatest British writer of the second half

of the twentieth century, and the latest addition to the great tradition

of Western Literature which includes, among many others, Homer,the Greek tragic poets, Shakespeare, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge,Keats, Whitman, Hopkins, Yeats, Lawrence, Eliot and the post-warEast European poets In accordance with Eliot’s dictum that everynew great writer added to the tradition changes the tradition, Hugheshas changed the way we read all these writers, not only those onwhom he has actually written

In the first chapter I try to describe the mythic nature of Hughes’imagination, and to claim great importance for the healing power ofsuch imagination at the threshold of a new and dark millennium.This seems to me necessary because criticism, before it can undertakeanything else (if there is anything else it is qualified to undertake),must first reach the point of being able to actually read the work –read it, that is, not in terms of some prior expectations or critical the-ory, but in terms of what we can divine of the author’s own inner idea

of what he or she is after Every creative writer has a unique tive context, a matrix of psychologically or spiritually active imagery,for example, and can write living poems only out of it To become anadequate reader one must approach the work, in Hughes’ words,

imagina-‘with the cooperative, imaginative attitude of a co-author’, enter asdeeply as one can the writer’s imaginative world Otherwise it is timewasted to read that author at all Hughes’ imaginative world wasdeeply mythic, in the sense of both drawing on the body of myth wehave inherited and spontaneously creating new myths, or newexpressions of the primal myths This is the theme of my first chapter

Hughes began to receive in the last year of his life some long due recognition, in the form of glowing reviews, awards and massivesales Nevertheless, even in the obituaries, the media kept to theirown agenda, in which sex, suicide and guilt are far more interesting

over-than poetry, so that the general impression built up by the media overmany years remained intact, that Hughes’ greatest claim to fame was

as the husband of Sylvia Plath And the enormous amount of

atten-tion given to Birthday Letters showed little interest in what was at the

heart of that relationship, the deep commitment of both Hughes andPlath to poetry: ‘we only did what poetry told us to do’ This is thetheme of the second chapter

Like many other poets before him, Hughes fostered the half-truththat great poems write themselves in a single draft, which cannot bebettered Though no doubt this does occasionally happen, and cer-tainly happened occasionally for Hughes, the great majority of hispoems had to be worked at over many drafts, as his manuscripts reveal,before he discovered what wanted to get itself expressed In the thirdchapter I try to show how this process worked with a fairly typical

Hughes poem, ‘The Dove Came’, from Adam and the Sacred Nine

Ironically, the two works that received most of the belated acclaim,

Birthday Letters and Tales from Ovid, are not part of the main body of

Hughes’ achievement, since, splendid as they are of their kind, ther allowed Hughes the total imaginative freedom his greatest workneeded, each being Hughes’ treatment of already existing material,whether Ovid’s tales or the already well-documented factual record ofhis relationship with Sylvia Plath In both works the plot was prede-termined

nei-And by identifying the characters in Birthday Letters specifically as

Hughes and Plath, the poems inevitably cast the reader in the role of

voyeur, however deeply our sympathies might be engaged Birthday Letters sold ten times more copies than any other Hughes book in its

first year, not because it is ten times better as poetry but because thereare ten times as many voyeurs as poetry-lovers among book-buyers,and a hundred times as many among newspaper editors

Though Hughes, having begun by despising the confessionalmode in poetry, came to see it as of great value, particularly as auto-

therapy, the claim that Birthday Letters is the summit of his

achieve-ment is as absurd as it would be to claim that the sonnets (revelatory

as they are) are the pinnacle of Shakespeare’s As Hughes said in the

Paris Review interview in 1995:

Once you’ve contracted to write only the truth about yourself– as in some respected kinds of modern verse, or as in Shake-speare’s sonnets – then you can too easily limit yourself to whatyou imagine are the truths of the ego that claims your consciousbiography Your own equivalent of what Shakespeare got intohis plays is simply foregone (69–70)

Though there are wonderful poems from both before and after,the body of work on which Hughes’ reputation should stand (hisequivalent of what Shakespeare got into his plays) is almost every-thing he wrote in the seventies and very early eighties – the poems

collected in Season Songs (1974), Cave Birds (1975), Gaudete (1977), Remains of Elmet (1979), Moortown (1979) and River (1983) These

books contain the inestimable healing gifts which are Hughes’ legacy

to us all

In a 1996 interview (Negev) Hughes said:

Every work of art stems from a wound in the soul of the artist.When a person is hurt, his immune system comes into opera-tion and the self-healing process takes place, mental and phys-ical Art is a psychological component of the auto-immunesystem that gives expression to the healing process That is whygreat works of art make us feel good

There are artists who concentrate on expressing the damage,the blood, the mangled bones, the explosion of pain, in order

to rouse and shock the reader And there are those who hardlymention the circumstances of the wound, they are concernedwith the cure

There are also artists who begin in the first group and painfully, vellously, drag themselves into the second (though perhaps to dis-cover, at the end, that some damage is incurable) In doing so theyare enacting, in their work, the classic quest myth What Hughes said

mar-of Plath’s work is equally true mar-of his own: ‘The poems are chapters in

a mythology where the plot, seen as a whole and in retrospect, is

strong and clear’ (Faas 180) Nearly every poem from The Hawk in the Rain to River is a station on the spiritual and poetic journey by

which Hughes, with many set-backs, many cul-de-sacs, arrived at last

full circle from a world made of blood back to that same world nowseen, as a result of the journey with all its transfiguring pain, to be aworld made of light This is the theme of the fourth chapter The

journey ends with River Though there are fine poems from the

remaining years, they are few in comparison with the outpouring of

the seventies, and to one side of the driving quest After River Hughes

lapsed largely into prose and translations, putting his own tion at the service of the imaginations of others – of Aeschylus andEuripides, Ovid, Shakespeare, Racine, Coleridge, Pushkin,Wedekind, Lorca, Eliot, Keith Douglas, William Golding, Leonard

imagina-Baskin and Marin Sorescu Birthday Letters also stands apart Hughes

came to feel that they were the poems he should perhaps have ten, or tried to write, in the three-year silence after 1963 That theytook over 30 years to force themselves into utterance is its owntragedy

writ-The Life and Songs of the Crow would undoubtedly have been one

of Hughes’ greatest works had that vast project not been aborted in

1969 following the second paralysing ‘explosion of pain’ in Hughes’

life Crow itself is a gathering of what could be salvaged from the

debris These fragments from the first two-thirds of the story havebeen widely misinterpreted because readers lacked the necessary con-text of Crow’s quest, the ‘epic folk-tale’ in which Crow was to havebeen transformed Hughes came to regret not having provided thisessential framework in some form, and always gave chunks of itwhenever he read Crow poems But he declined to publish this mate-rial until he gave me permission to do so in this book

Hughes scholarship has been to date gratifyingly cooperative Duringthe 20 years this book has been in the making, I have received help

of many kinds from more scholars than I can hope to name It would

be invidious to try to establish any priority, so I shall list some ofthem alphabetically: Nick Bishop, Roger Elkin, Colin Fraser, NickGammage, Mark Hinchliff, Fred Rue Jacobs, Claas Kazzer, TerryGifford, Joanny Moulin, Colin Raw, Neil Roberts, Len Scigaj, AnnSkea, Steve Tabor I should also like to thank Olwyn Hughes andDaniel Huws for the information they have generously supplied, and

to acknowledge the great deal I have learned from the many studentswith whom I have studied Ted Hughes in adult classes

‘The Genesis of “The Dove Came”’ is reprinted from The Challenge

of Ted Hughes, by kind permission of Macmillan The reprinting of the poem from the Rainbow Press edition of Adam and the Sacred Nine is by kind permission of Olwyn Hughes All quotations from

unpublished sources are by kind permission of Ted Hughes and theTed Hughes Estate

ABS Australian Broadcasting Corporation

ATH Keith Sagar, The Art of Ted Hughes, Cambridge University

Press, 1975

BBC TP British Broadcasting Corporation Tape

BF A Stevenson, Bitter Fame, Viking, London, 1989

CUP Cambridge University Press

DT The Daily Telegraph

IOS Independent on Sunday

KS Keith Sagar

LE Limited Edition

PBS Poetry Book Society, London

PR Paris Review, Interview, Spring 1995

SPJ Hughes and McCullough (eds), The Journals of Sylvia

Plath, Ballantine, NY, 1991

SPLH A Plath (ed.), Sylvia Plath: Letters Home, Harper and

by Ann Skea

This list of Ted Hughes’ publications, life events and interests is not comprehensive It was compiled from books, newspaper articles, recordings, letters and notes to give an overview of important and formative infl uences that have helped to shape his work It also suggests the date at which some of his works originated

It is best used in conjunction with K Sagar and S Tabor, Ted Hughes:

A Bibliography, 1946–1995, 2nd edn, Mansell, London, 1998.

1930

Born 17 August, Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, to William Henry and Edith (née Farrar) Hughes Sister (Olwyn) two years older; brother (Gerald) ‘was ten years older than me and made my early life a kind

of paradise … which was ended abruptly by the war’ (Letter to AS,

November 1982, re ‘Two’)

‘My fi rst six years shaped everything’ (Interview, DT, 2 November

contains seeds of later story, ‘The Harvesting’.

Infl uenced by folk-tales, Shakespeare, Yeats, Hopkins, Virgil, Eliot,

the ‘very different rhythms of the King James Bible’ (WP 5–6).

(PR 11) Begins two years of national (military) service Stationed at

a remote radar station at Fylingdales where he had nothing to do but read and reread Shakespeare and watch the grass grow ‘He literally

knows Shakespeare by heart’ (SPLH, 2 August 1956).

1951

Enters Pembroke to read English ‘I spent most of my time

read-ing folklore and Yeats’s poems’ (UU 56) ‘Beethoven’s music was my therapy’ (PR 85).

Publications (major

publications in bold)

1954

‘The Little Boys and the Seasons’

(Granta) – pseudonym Daniel Hearing.

‘Song of the Sorry Lovers’ (Chequer) –

pseudonym Peter Crew ‘The Jaguar’ /

‘The Casualty’ (Chequer).

1955

‘The Woman with Such High Heels’

(Delta) ‘Comment on Chequer’

(review – pseudonym Jonathan Dyce).

1956

Many Hawk in the Rain poems

published, including ‘Fallgrief ’s

Girlfriends’, and the poems that were

to become ‘Law in the Country of the

Cats’, ‘Secretary’ and ‘Soliloquy of a

Misanthrope’, in the St Botolph’s

Review.

Work in progress, events, interests and infl uences

Graduates from Cambridge Writes

‘The Conversion of the Reverend Skinner’, ‘The Hag’, ‘Law in the Country of the Cats’.

Living in London (Rugby St.) and Cambridge Rose gardener, night- watchman, zoo attendant, school- teacher, reader for J Arthur Rank Planning to teach in Spain then

emigrate to Australia (SPLH, 4 May).

Reads a Penguin of American Poets

‘that started me writing’, ‘infatuated

with John Crowe Ransom’ (UU 210).

Writes ‘The Thought-Fox’, ‘Secretary’,

‘Soliloquy of a Misanthrope’, Doux’, ‘Fallgrief ’s Girlfriends’, ‘Two Phases’, ‘The Decay of Vanity’,

‘Billet-‘Childbirth’ and ‘Wind’ (1955–6).

26 February – Launch of St Botolph’s

Review Meets Sylvia Plath.

25 March – Second meeting with Sylvia.

16 June – Marries Sylvia Plath at St George the Martyr’s Church, Bloomsbury.

June/July – In Spain Writing animal

Many Hawk in the Rain poems

published.

April – ‘O’Kelly’s Angel’ (story)

(Granta) May – ‘Bartholemew Pygge

Esquire’ (story) (Granta).

August – First Lupercal poem

published: ‘Dream of Horses’ (Grecourt

Review) September – The Hawk in

the Rain December – ‘Everyman’s

Odyssey’ (Landmarks and Voyages).

1958

Many Lupercal poems published

‘invocations to writing’, ‘a deliberate

effort to fi nd a simple concrete

language’ (UU 209).

November – Living in Cambridge (55 Eltisley Ave.) Teaching English and drama at local secondary modern school Sylvia Plath types out and

submits The Hawk in the Rain to

Harper’s competition: ‘I don’t see how they can help but accept this; it’s the most rich and powerful work since

Yeats and Dylan Thomas’ (SPLH, 21

November) Astrology, horoscopes, hypnotism, tarot and experimenting

with Ouija board (SPLH, 28

October).

February – The Hawk in the Rain wins

Harper publication contest Pan and

Ouija board (SPLH, 8 February).

Snatchcraftington, alphabetical fables (SPLH, 24 February) Writes ‘View of

a Pig’, ‘Quest’ and ‘Thrushes’ at Eltisley Ave April – BBC reading (1 poem) May – Hears Robert Frost reading at

Cambridge (SPLH, 24 May) June – To

Yorkshire Then to USA (Wellesley then Cape Cod) August – To Northampton (337 Elm St.) Sylvia teaching at Smith College Meets Bill and Dido Merwin.

Spring – Teaching at Amherst, University of Massachusetts 11 April – Poetry reading at Harvard (SPLH, 22 April) 4 May – Meets Baskins (Leonard and Esther) May – Reading

Creon in Paul Roche’s Oedipus trans at

Smith (SPJ, 19 May) June – Six

Lupercal poems recorded in USA Rents

fl at in Boston (Willow St., Beacon Hill) July – Summons Pan with Ouija

board (SPJ, 4 July; SPLH, 5 July) August – BBC (6 Lupercal poems).

December – Making wolf mask (SPJ,

Pike (BS) (LE 50) Many Lupercal

poems published Reviews: Weekend in

Dinlock, Segal.

1960

March – Lupercal ‘The Caning’, ‘Very

fi ne, very diffi cult’ (SPJ, 15

November), ‘The Rainhorse’, ‘Sunday’,

‘Snow’, ‘The Harvesting’ (stories).

April – Awarded Guggenheim

fellowship (SPJ, 23 April) Summer –

Touring N America by car Had been pursuing Cabalistic and Hermetic interests for some time (UU 41) Doing ‘exercises in meditation and invocation … [from] magic literature’

(UU 210).

September – Yaddo Artists’ Colony for

11 weeks Writes ‘Things Present’, the

last of the Lupercal poems Meets Chou

Wen-Chung, agrees to collaborate on

Bardo Thodol October – Writes House

of Taurus (scrapped) ‘symbolic drama

based on the Euripides play The

Bacchae’ (SPLH, 7 October) Precursor

Writing Recklings and Wodwo poems

and radio plays Writing and rewriting

Bardo Thodol libretto (unperformed).

Setting: Chou Wen-Chung Dreams of

The Wound action and text (ABC

Hawk in the Rain wins Somerset

Maugham award (SPLH, 24 March).

Lupercal wins Hawthornden Prize

(SPLH, 27 March).

1 April – Frieda Rebecca born.

April – Dinner at T.S Eliot’s (SPLH,

26 April) ‘one of the very great poets.

One of the few’ (PR 73).

May – Meets Alan Sillitoe and his wife,

March – Dully Gumption’s College

Courses ‘Theology’, ‘a more

concentrated and natural kind of

poetry’ (UU 211).

April – Meet my Folks August –

Pamphlets for BBC broadcasts

Listening and Writing Autumn – ‘Miss

Mambrett and the Wet Cellar’ (story).

Reviews: Lochness Monster, Dinsdale;

Living Free, Adamson; The Cat in the

Hat Comes Back, Seuss; Barnaby and

the Horses, Pender; Timba, Gringolo,

Koenig.

1962

April – Leonard Baskin (Introduction).

May- Selected Poems with Thom Gunn.

June – ‘The Poetry of Keith Douglas’

(essay) Introductions: The Little Prince,

St Exupéry; Tarka the Otter,

Williamson; The Worst Journey in the

World, Cherry-Garrard Reviews: The

Nerve of Some Animals, Froman; Man

and Dolphin, Lilly; Primitive Song,

Bowra; One Fish Two Fish, Seuss; The

Cat’s Opera, Dillon; The Otter’s Tale,

Maxwell; Animals of the Forest, Vérité;

Close-up of a Honeybee, Foster; Oddities

of Animal Life, Roberts; Imitations,

Lowell; Anthology of W African Folklore,

Jablow; Everyman’s Ark, Johnson;

Here Come the Elephants, Goudey.

June – Cocktail party at Fabers.

Photograph with Faber Poets (SPLH,

24 June), ‘Duk-dam charm to call fools

in a circle’ (ABC interview, 1976) BBC accepts House of Aries (SPLH, 9

July) BBC – plays, stories and talks January – Thom Gunn to dinner

(SPLH, 1 January).

February – Sylvia Plath miscarries July – Reading (Poetry at the Mermaid, London).

August – ‘The Wound’ written, ‘a

Celtic-Gothic Bardo Thodol’ (ABC

interview, 1976) Sells lease on London

fl at to Wevills Move to Devon (Court Green).

November – BBC, The Odyssey, ‘The

Storm’ Book V (translation of Homer);

The House of Aries (play produced).

BBC – interview, talk, poems, school broadcasts Selector for Poetry Book Society Choice.

Gaudete – begun as a fi lm script (UU

123) The Chemical Wedding of

Christian Rosencreutz, Andreas: ‘for over

a year [this] became my prime source

of inspiration’ (BBC TP, 21 January

1963).

17 January – Nicholas Farrar born.

February – BBC, The Wound (play

produced) Interest in shamanic dismemberment, Bacchae and Orphic myths (BF 320) Reading Nietzsche May – Wevills visit Selling Daffodils

(SPLH 14 May).

June – Beekeeping (SPLH 15 June).

July – Reading for Critical Quarterly, Bangor, Wales (BF 251) BBC – school

broadcasts, talk, poems, stories September – Ted and Sylvia agree to a

January – Here Today, (introduction).

May – Five American Poets (ed.).

September – ‘The Rock’, (The Listener);

‘The Poetry of Keith Douglas’ (essay).

October – ‘Ten Poems by Sylvia Plath’

(introduction) November – How the

Whale Became (fables); The

Earth-Owl and other Moon People; ‘The Rat

Under the Bowler’ (essay) Reviews: I

Said the Sparrow, West; The World of

Men, Baldwin; Rule and Energy, Press;

Vagrancy, O’Connor; Emily Dickinson’s

Poetry, Anderson; Folktales of Japan,

Seki; Folktales of Israel, Noy.

1964

January – ‘The Howling of Wolves’.

February – Selected Poems, Keith

Douglas (ed.): (introduction).

March – ‘The Suitor’ (story).

April – Nessie the Mannerless

Monster; ‘Dice’ (poem in 8 parts).

Reviews: Voss, White; Myth and

Religion of the North, Turville-Petre;

The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen,

Day Lewis; Selections of African Prose,

Whiteley; The Heroic Recitations of the

Bahima of Ankole, Morris; Somali

Poetry, Andrzejewski and Lewis; The

Three Christs of Ypsilanti, Rokeach;

Letters of Alexander Pushkin, Shaw;

Astrology, MacNeice; Ghost and

Divining-rod, Lethbridge; Shamanism,

Eliade; The Sufi s, Shah (probably

written in 1962, see BF 320);

Mysterious Senses, Dröscher;

Heimskringla, The Prose Edda, Sturlson;

Gods, Demons and Others, Narayan.

1965

January – ‘Sylvia Plath’ (note on Ariel).

January – BBC, Diffi culties of a

Bridegroom (play produced), based on The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz, ‘words, music and pictures

… the interest is in imagery and mood’

(BBC TP, 17 October 1965); ‘a tribal dream’ (UU 212) February – Sylvia

Plath dies Writes ‘The Howling of Wolves’ March – Writes ‘Song of a Rat’ September – BBC, ‘The Rock’ (talk) BBC – interviews, poems, talks.

Awarded lecturer’s salary at University

of Vienna for 5 years, by Abraham

Woursell Foundation (PR 62) February – BBC, Dogs: A Scherzo (play produced) Gaudete fi lm scenario written Writing Eat Crow (UU 212) November/December – BBC, The

Coming of the Kings (play produced).

March 3 – Alexandra Tatiana Eloise

April – ‘The Genius of Isaac Bashevis

Singer’ (essay).

June – Eat Crow (play) (parts of

Diffi culties of a Bridegroom); Modern

Poetry in Translation (editorial) Autumn

– ‘The Tiger’s Bones’ (play); ‘Beauty

and the Beast’ (play) Reviews: Faber

Book of Ballads, Hodgart; Men who

Marched Away, Parsons; Literature

Among the Primitives, The Primitive

Reader, Greenaway.

1966

Summer – ‘Vasco Popa’ (essay).

Autumn – ‘On the Chronological

Order of Plath’s Poems’ (notes).

October – The Burning of the Brothel

(LE 300) Reviews: Dylan Thomas

Letters, Fitzgibbon.

1967

January – Recklings (LE 150).

April – Scapegoats and Rabies (LE 400).

May – Wodwo ‘a descent into

destruction of some sort’ (UU 205).

August – Animal Poems (LE 100).

December – Poetry in the Making

(broadcasts); ‘Gravestones’ (BS) (LE

40) First Crow poems published:

‘Three Legends’, ‘A Battle’, ‘Lovesong’.

1968

February – The Iron Man (story): ‘I

just wrote it out as I told it over two or

three nights’ (IOS, 5 September 1993)

March – A Choice of Emily Dickinson’s

Verse (introduction) July – Yehuda

Amichai: Selected Poems (collaborated

on trans.); Beauty and the Beast (play).

December – Many Crow poems

published Five Autumn Songs (LE

500) Reviews: Folk-tales of Chile,

Helps to organize the fi rst big Arts Council International Poetry Festival Reading with Auden and Neruda (PR 73) September – BBC, ‘The House of Donkeys’ (re-telling of Japanese fol k - tale) Reads 3 poems at Edinburgh Festival October – BBC, reading

‘Ghost Crabs’, ‘Waking’, ‘Gog III’ from

play Diffi culties of a Bridegroom November/December – BBC, The

Tiger’s Bones; Beauty and the Beast (plays

produced) BBC – poetry readings, talks.

Crow poems begun at request of Baskin to accompany drawings, ‘the way I wrote … when I was about

nineteen’ (UU 121).

September – BBC, The Price of a Bride

(play produced) BBC – poetry reading, talks.

July – BBC Poetry International ’67 (speaking and reading; broadsheet and programme notes) September/October

– BBC, The Head of Gold (play

produced).

19 March – adaptation of Seneca’s

Oedipus performed (Old Vic):

‘concentrated my writing … useful in

Crow’ (UU 212) March – The Demon

of Adachigahara (libretto), setting by

Crosse, performed at Shrewsbury May

– BBC, Sean, the Fool, the Devil and the

Cats (play produced); Five Autumn Songs written for and read at Harvest

Festival, Little Missenden Autumn –

Glass Man and the Golden Bird,

Manning-Sanders; The Black Monkey,

Hampden.

1969

February – Vasco Popa: Selected Poems

(introduction) December – Seneca’s

Oedipus (adaptation) Many Crow

poems published.

1970

January – ‘The Chronological Order of

Sylvia Plath’s Poems’ (note in The Art of

Sylvia Plath) March – The Martyrdom

of Bishop Farrar (LE 100); ‘Myth and

Education’ I (US publication) (essay);

A Crow Hymn (LE 100).

August – ‘Four Crow Poems’ (BS) (LE

20).

September – The Coming of the

Kings (4 plays) October – Crow:

from the Life and Songs of the

Crow; A Few Crows (LE 75); Amulet

(LE 1); ‘Fighting for Jerusalem’ (BS)

(LE 1); The Tiger’s Bones (play); The

House of Donkeys (part of the play);

Interview with Ekbert Faas (UU

197–208) Reviews: Children’s Games in

Street and Playground, Opie; The

Environmental Revolution, Nicholson,

The God Beneath the Sea,

Garfi eld/Blishen; The Book of

Dublin BBC – poetry and ings The Arvon Foundation established by John Fairfax and John Moat: ‘I thought the scheme was unworkable’ Involved with fi rst course

playread-in Devon and was converted (Letter to

AS, August 1993).

February – The New World songs

commissioned (performed in 1972) March – Househunting with Assia on

Tyneside Last Crow poem, ‘A Horrible

Religious Error’, written on train from Manchester after fi rst televised reading Death of Assia and Shura Co-director

of Poetry International The Battle of

Aughrim recorded Death of Hughes’

mother Awarded City of Florence International Poetry Prize.

May – Poetry D-Day (reading at the Roundhouse).

August – Marries Carol Orchard September – Settings of two poems performed at the Edinburgh festival:

‘King of Carrion’, ‘Eros’ November –

Reads from Crow at ICA BBC –

poetry readings, talks.

March – Shakespeare’s Poem (LE 150).

April – Crow Wakes (LE 200); Poems

with Ruth Fainlight and Alan Sillitoe;

Autumn Song (poster) [‘Who Killed

the Leaves?’]; ‘The Poetry of Ted

Hughes’ (sheets) (LE) May – Fiesta

Melons, Plath (introduction) (LE 150);

Crossing the Water, Plath (ed.); Orpheus

(verse play).

September – Winter Trees, Plath (ed.)

(note).

November – Eat Crow (LE 150); With

Fairest Flowers While Summer Lasts:

Poems from Shakespeare (ed.)

(introduction) (LE 140); A Choice of

Shakespeare’s Verse (introduction) First

formulation of the ‘Tragic Equation’.

1972

February – Sunday (story from Wodwo,

separate publication by CUP).

September – The Coming of the Kings

(script).

October – Selected Poems 1957–67; ‘In

the Little Girl’s Angel Gaze’ (BS) (LE

50).

November – Orghast at Persepolis,

Smith (excerpts from play; ideas,

language and myth); Works in Progress 5

(Faas interview) Reviews: A Separate

Reality, Castaneda.

1973

July – Orpheus (play).

November – Prometheus on his Crag

(LE 160); Stones: Poems by Paul

Merchant (introduction) (LE 150).

1974

February – The Story of Vasco (libretto).

July – Sean, the Fool, the Devil and the

January – BBC, Orpheus (play

performed) Olwyn Hughes founds Rainbow Press Begins to look again at

Gaudete material The underworld, the

‘most interesting part’ of story

narrative, ‘trimmed itself down’ (UU

214).

May/September – Accompanies Peter

Brook to Shiraz Festival, Persia Orghast

performed: ‘we orchestrated the sounds’

(ABC interview, 1976) The Conference

of the Birds: ‘I wrote about 100 poems

and scenarios for Peter Brook’s company to improvise with’

(Conversation with AS, 1995).

November – Reads at Manchester Poetry Centre.

August/September – ‘The New World’ (libretto), setting by Crosse, performed

at the Three Choirs Festival (Worcester) Buys Moortown Farm (95 acres) and runs it with Carol and her father, Jack Orchard, who had owned a farm near Crediton (Conversation with

March – The Story of Vasco performed

(Sadler’s Wells) April – Reads at Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations, Southwark Awarded Premio Inter- nazionale Taormina Prize.

Sees Baskin bird-drawings Begins bird

drama, Cave Birds: ‘my starting point

(script) September - Spring, Summer,

Autumn, Winter (LE 140) The House

of Donkeys (complete play) First Cave

Birds poems published: ‘The

Summoner’, ‘The Executioner’, ‘The

Risen’.

1975

March – The Interrogator (LE 250) (‘A

Titled Vulturess’) May – Scolar Press

edition of Cave Birds (10 poems

written 1974–5) October – Season

Songs December – Children as Writers

2 (foreword) A few Gaudete poems

published.

1976

May – Earth Moon (LE 226).

July – Eclipse (LE 250); ‘Moon Hops’

(LE 1).

September – Janos Pilinszky: Selected

Poems (co-ed.) (introduction); Words

Broadsheet Twenty-Five: Four Poets

(‘The Virgin Knight’) (LE 200).

November – Moon Whales ‘Myth and

Education’ II (London publication)

(essay); Arvon Foundation

Conversation.

1977

May – Gaudete June – Chiasmadon

murder of the Mediterranean Goddess’

(Letter to AS, November 1984)

Awarded Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.

April – Reading Crow poems at Cambridge Poetry Festival ‘[Crow] an

expanded story for children’

(Cambridge University recording) May – First Hughes exhibition staged

in Ilkley Reading at Hull University.

30 May – Cave Birds and Lumb’s

Remains performed (Ilkley Literature

Festival): ‘[Cave Birds] a mystery play

of sorts’, ‘[Lumb’s Remains] constitutes

the Epilogue of a longish poem called

Gaudete’ (programme notes) June –

BBC, Cave Birds read Writes Adam

and the Sacred Nine Leases Lumb Bank

to Arvon Foundation: ‘I’ve poured a lot into it because I’ve seen what those courses can do for students’ (Letter to

KS).

February – Death of Jack Orchard March – Attends Adelaide Festival (readings and interviews).

September – Reads with Pilinszky at Manchester Poetry Centre.

Became Founding President of Farms for City Children charity.

April – Finishing Elmet poems.

(co-trans.) (introduction); Johnny Panic

and the Bible of Dreams, Plath

(introduction, postscript).

August – Sunstruck (LE 300).

1978

February – Moon Bells.

June – Vasco Popa: Collected Poems

(introduction).

July – A Solstice (LE 100).

August – Orts (LE 200) October –

Cave Birds; Moortown Elegies (LE

150); ‘Moortown Elegies’ (BS) (LE

100); ‘The Head’ (story).

1979

January – The Threshold (LE 100).

April – Remains of Elmet (LE 180),

‘written in response to Fay Godwin’s

photographs … fi rst poems refl ected

my mother’s love of this area’ August –

Four Tales Told by an Idiot (LE 450).

October – Moortown.

November – Adam and the Sacred

Nine (LEE 200), ‘to conjure myself to

be a bit more birdlike’ (PR 72).

December – Henry Williamson (tribute)

(LE 200); Morrigu Press (BS, 3 poems)

(LE 30); ‘Brooktrout’ (BS) (LE 60);

‘Pan’ (BS) (LE 60); ‘Woodpecker’ (BS)

(LE 60); ‘In the Black Chapel’ (BS) (LE

1500) for V & A exhibition; ‘Wolverine’

(BS) (LE 75); ‘You hated Spain’, ‘Salmon

Taking Times’, ‘The Earthenwar Head’.

Poems in All Round the Year, Morpurgo.

August – Platform Performance of Gaudete (National Theatre).

September – BBC, introduces and reads Season Songs October – Lectures

on Herbert, Holub, Amichai and Popa

at the Cheltenham Festival Second interview with Ekbert Faas (UU 208–15) Awarded OBE.

February – Reads at the Hobson Gallery, Cambridge Recording for Norwich Tapes, Critical Forum Series:

‘[poetry/magic] is one way of making things happen the way you want them

to happen’.

April – Reads at Lancaster Literature Festival ‘It’s been a really scatty summer – too many people, too many

dates & appointments’ (Letter to KS).

February – Reads at the Common wealth Institute.

March – Reads at Leeds University.

May – ITV, reads poems from Remains

of Elmet July – ‘We [TH and Nicholas]

had a memorable three weeks in Iceland – very tough country Caught some

very big fi sh, & in plenty’ (Letter to KS).

August/September – Working on several collaborations, with Richard

Blackford (The Pig Organ), Peter Keen (River) and Leonard Baskin (Under the

North Star and A Primer of Birds).

Voted best poet writing in English in

small New Poetry poll (BBC Internet

October – The Reef and Other Poems,

Sagar (introduction) ‘Eagle’ (BS) (LE

75); ‘Mosquito’ (BS) (LE 60); ‘Tapir’s

Song’ (BS) (LE 15); ‘Sky Furnace’ (BS)

(LE 150); ‘The Tigerboy’ (story) New

Poetry 6 (ed.) Ted Hughes: The

Unaccom modated Universe, Faas

(interviews, essays, reviews collected).

1981

March – Under the North Star.

July – A Primer of Birds (LE 250);

‘Three River Poems’ (BS) (LE 75);

‘Cows’ (BS) (LE 76); The Way to Write,

Fairfax and Moat (introduction);

Collected Poems, Plath (ed.)

(introduction); ‘In Defence of Crow’

(essay).

1982

February – New Selected Poems

1957–81 July – Wolf-watching (LE

75); ‘The Great Irish Pike’ (sheets) (LE

26); The Rattle Bag (ed with Seamus

Heaney); The Journals of Sylvia Plath

(co-ed.) (foreword); Arvon Foundation

Poetry Comp 1980 Anthology (cojudge)

(part of intro.); What Rhymes

with Secret, Brownjohn (foreword).

Reviews: Where I Used to Play on the

Fishing in Alaska with Nicholas.

April – River ‘fi nished more or less’ (Letter to KS) Reads from Remains of

Elmet at Hebden Bridge The Pig Organ

(libretto), setting, Blackford, performed (Roundhouse, London) BBC – poetry readings.

August – First International Hughes Conference held in Manchester in conjunction with major exhibition at Manchester City Art Gallery.

November – Sets up and judges (with Heaney, Larkin and Causley) the

Observer / Arvon Foundation Poetry

Competition: ‘That’s the last judging I shall ever do Ever Ever Ever Ever.

Ever’ (Letter to KS).

Death of Hughes’ father.

March/April – Spends a month in Ireland where he catches his biggest pike December – ‘Spent the best (worst) part of this year involved in the coils of the Plath journals … my own compositions have been in hibernation now for pretty well a year.… Just to bring everything home together I made

a reselected poems’ (Letter to KS).

July – receives honorary degree from Exeter University

October – Reads at Cheltenham Literature Festival: ‘I’ve told myself I shall never read in public again’ (Letter

to KS).

March – The Achievement of Ted Hughes

(contains 30 uncollected poems).

September – River ‘Mice are Funny

Little Creatures’ (BS) (LE 75); ‘Weasels

at Work’ (BS) (LE 75); ‘Fly Inspects’

(BS) (LE 75); Modern Poetry in

Translation, Weissbort (introduction).

1984

June – What is the Truth?, ‘written at

the suggestion of C and M Morpurgo

who run Farms for City Children’ (PBS

Notes, Autumn 1995) The Complete

Prints of Leonard Baskin (‘The Hanged

Man and the Dragonfl y’ – introduction);

Where I Used to Play on the Green, G

Hughes (introduction); Britain: The

World by Itself, Perring and Press (poem

and prose passage); ‘Subsidy for Poetry’

(essay).

1985

Mokomaki (LE 50); The Best Worker

in Europe (LE 150); Sylvia Plath’s

Selected Poems (ed.); 45 Contemporary

Poems, Turner (poem and essay);

‘Putting a value on UK’s salmon riches’

(letter).

January–March – Spends fi rst three months writing ‘The Hanged Man and the Dragonfl y’: ‘I’ve sweated blood – as

never’ (Letter to KS).

April/May – Works on Flowers and

Insects Visits Nicholas in Africa: ‘a

great, self-contained, blissful dream’

(Letter to KS) Fishing in Scotland: ‘4

of us in 5 days caught 59 salmon’

(Letter to KS) Attends Toronto Poetry

Festival.

June – Visits Ireland and festival in Orkney.

August – ‘I’m trying to add one or two

things to River and to Remains of Elmet’ (Letter to KS)

October – Reads at Benefi t Reading for Frances Horovitz.

November – Reading tour to schools, including Hull, West Kirby and Oxford: ‘Must have read to about 6000

or so, in all’ (Letter to KS) Visits

Egypt

December – Appointed Poet Laureate January – ‘I’ve been chipping away at bits and pieces about Calder Valley’

(Letter to KS) April – Reads at

National Poetry Centre May – Fishing

in Scotland

June – Visits Nicholas in Alaska:

‘Called in on Victoria & Vancouver – and realized that’s where I ought to be

living’ (Letter to KS) Wrote The Cat

and the Cuckoo there.

October – ‘Just fi nished my mini-tour

of readings Faber set it up – one in

each of their counties’ (Letter to KS).

August – Ffangs the Vampire Bat and

the Kiss of Truth October – Flowers

and Insects ‘The Whistle’; ‘Group’;

‘Circuit’, poems by Sorescu (trans.);

William Golding, Carey (‘Baboons and

Neanderthals’ – essay); ‘Children and

secretly listening adults’ (letter); ‘About

the Arvon Foundation’ (notes).

1987

August – T.S Eliot: A Tribute (LE 150).

September – The Cat and the Cuckoo

(LE 2000, 250 signed): ‘my wish was to

capitalise on a character study of the

creature My model was runic knots …

mnemonic quipus’ (PBS Notes, Autumn

1995) The Complete Poems of Keith

Douglas, Graham (introduction); The

Singing Brink, Dooley and Hunter,

(introduction); ‘An Introduction to

“The Thought Fox”’ (essay); ‘To parse

or not to parse’ (letter); ‘On Sylvia

Plath’s biographers’ (letter); ‘No chance

for fi shery interests’ (letter); ‘The place

where Sylvia Plath should rest in peace’

(letter); ‘Sylvia Plath: the facts about

her life and the desecration of her

grave’ (letter); ‘Where research becomes

intrusion’ (letter).

1988

June – Tales of the Early World

(fables) An Anthology of Poetry for

Shakespeare, Osborne (foreword); First

January – ITV, The Iron Man, readings

by Tom Baker begin ‘This has been a chaotic spring & summer I’ve hardly met myself, let alone anybody else US legal business [in connection with the

fi lming of The Bell Jar] boiling and

bubbling, among other slips of yew & toads’ eyes.… Then went to Spain – to lay claim to my butt of sack’ (Letter to

KS).

June – awarded honorary degree from Cambridge University.

October – Platform performance of

Gaudete at the Almeida Theatre,

November – Assembling Wolfwatching.

Begins writing The Iron Woman: ‘at one

point I was scared by it and had to back off ’ (IOS 34).

to an Editor, Fisher (includes letters

from TH)

1989

September – Moortown Diary;

Wolfwatching: ‘doubting my powers

and getting older Of course both

wolves are caged and confi ned’

(Conversation with AS, December

1994) In Praise of Trout, Profumo

(foreword); Notes on Wolfwatching

(PBS Bulletin, Autumn 1989).

1990

Capriccio (LE 50); Sean Hill’s Gidleigh

Park Cookbook (foreword); Gabbiano,

Pennati (facsimile of letter from TH);

Dear (Next) Prime Minister, Astley

(includes letter from TH); Three

Contemporary Poets, Dyson (includes ‘A

Reply to Critics’ and excerpts from

April – Shakespeare and the Goddess

of Complete Being (prose);

‘Shakespeare and the Goddess’,

‘Battling Over the Bard’ (reply to

review); ‘Ted Hughes and the Plath

estate’ (letter).

June – Rain Charm for the Duchy (LE

280 and trade edn) September – A

Dancer to God (tribute to Eliot).

November – ‘Your World’ (essay)

Eliot centenary address, ‘A Dancer to God’.

November – Reads at Armistice Festival, Church of St Clement Danes, London.

July – Begins writing Shakespeare and

The Goddess of Complete Being as The Silence of Cordelia.

November – Visits Bangladesh for the Asia Poetry Festival.

July – Second International Hughes Conference in Manchester.

December – Suffers from shingles until March 1991.

in Derry’ (Letter to KS) ‘Finished The

Iron Woman’ (Letter to KS) Reviews: Your World (winning photographs UN

competition) BBC – poetry readings.

May – The Mermaid’s Purse (LE 100):

‘not as warm as The Cat and The

Cuckoo’ (Conversation with AS,

October 1993).

June – Three Books: ‘Reading your

book [Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest]

galvanised [Fabers] into publishing

Elmet, Cave Birds and River as a single

volume’ (Letter to AS, August 1995).

September – The Iron Woman (story)

‘a myth about writing a poem’ (IOS

34); ‘The Reckless Head’ (BS) (LE);

Sacred Earth Dramas (foreword); ‘The

Bear’; ‘The Deadfall’ (story).

1994

March – Winter Pollen July – Poetry

(in Macedonian) (LE 500).

October – Elmet: ‘I deliberately made

this version a collection about my

family’ (Conversation with AS).

November – After Ovid, Hoffman and

Lasdun (includes 4 versions of

Metamorphoses poems).

December – Earth Dances (LE 250);

‘T.S Eliot: the Death of St Narcissus’

(introductory note).

1995

March – New Selected Poems; The

Dream Fighter (stories); PR interview

with Drew Heinz; ‘Sylvia Plath: the

Bell Jar and Ariel ’ (essay).

August – Spring Awakening (TH’s

version of Wedekind’s play).

September – Shakespeare’s Ovid (LE

200).

October – Diffi culties of a Bridegroom

(stories); Collected Animal Poems (4

books); ‘Football’ (poem strip) (LE

February – ‘I blundered into the pit of sorting out what exactly is going on in Coleridge’s 3 poems – Kubla, Mariner,

Christabel’ (Letter to KS)

March – Wilfred Owen Centenary at Oswestry Talks about ‘the catharsis of memorialising the dead in books’ (IOS 34) Enthusiasm for Tony Buzan’s experiments for developing brain and memory (IOS 32)

August – ‘Just going to Canada for a few days, do one or two readings’

(Letter to KS) Reads with Tony

Harrison in York.

Goes to the Macedonia Poetry Festival.

6 October – Reading for Poetry Day (National Theatre) with Simon Armitage (‘The Earthenware Head’,

‘Anniversary’, ‘The Last of the 1st/5th Lancashire Fusiliers’).

December – In London for Sacred Earth Drama Group meeting.

Re The Mermaid’s Purse – Reg Lloyd

‘disengaged from it and another illustrator found by Fabers’

(Conversation with AS).

Sets aside his work on Alcestis to start work on The Oresteia (commissioned

by the Northcott Theatre, Exeter) –

‘the best thing I have ever done I read

it and wonder how I ever did it.’ (Conversation with AS, September 1998).

February – Reads at Bath Literature

Festival; BBC TV, The Dreamfi ghter:

reading by Bill Paterson May – fi nishes

his ‘translation’ of Wedekind’s Spring

Blood Wedding (TH’s version of

Lorca’s play); A Choice of Coleridge’s

Verse (ed.).

1997

Tales from Ovid ‘Shaggy and Spotty’

(story): ‘found in my archive … a story I

told the children when they were about

two and just jotted notes’ (Conversation

with AS, September) By Heart (ed)

(introduction): ‘it worked for Nicholas

when he was at school’ (Conversation

with AS, September) The School Bag,

(ed with Seamus Heaney).

Barbican in August – ‘powerful and relevant to modern youth’

(Conversation with AS, October) BBC – poetry readings Considers collating archive mss in

preparation for selling them Asks KS and AS to help, but eventually decides

he needs to do it himself Writing more Ovid and writing ‘about 100 poems about things I should have resolved thirty years ago Should have written then, but couldn’t’ (Conversation with

AS).

September – ‘I also did 25 tales from

Ovid’s Metamorphoses – enjoyed that A holiday in a rest home!!’ (Letter to AS) October – Blood Wedding performed

(Young Vic), director Tim Supple: ‘a

diffi cult play to stage’ (Letter to AS,

September).

December – Translating Sir Gawain

and the Green Knight: ‘Did about 250

lines in 2 days, for The School Bag, so

thought I’d do the rest in 10 Mistake!’

of The Iron Man, abandon Pete

Townsend and David Thacker’s musical version: ‘Pete says the script is nothing like my own writing’

(Conversation with AS, September).

September – Moortown Farm sold.

Talks about Birthday Letters:

‘autobiographical.… I chose two dates

January – Birthday Letters Phèdre

(TH’s version of Racine’s play); Howls

& Whispers (LE) Version of Euripides’

Alcestis sent to Barry Rutter of

Northern Broadsides (Conversation

with AS, September).

Winter – Interview published in Wild

Steelhead and Salmon.

1999

Tales from Ovid (acting version).

‘The Prophet’ (version of Pushkin’s

poem from Weissbort’s trans.).

The Mermaid’s Purse (trade edn).

Aeschylus: The Oresteia.

horoscopes, April 23 or an earlier one’

(Conversation with AS).

October – ‘I’ve put together about 90 pieces about S.P Still thinking whether

to pub or not Probably not, but it

would be a burden gone’ (Letter to KS).

November – Decides to publish

Birthday Letters: ‘Don’t speak about it –

otherwise there’ll be a whole Gallipoli

of entrenched weaponry mounted ready

Totally vulnerable as it is’ (Letter to KS).

January – Birthday Letters tops best seller list; Tales from Ovid wins the

Whitbread Book of the Year prize.

March – Tales from Ovid wins the W.H.

Smith Literature Award ‘Just put together about 250 of the best translations of Yehuda Amichai With

Daniel Weissbort’ (Letter to KS) Adds Heracles interlude to Alcestis before

sending it to Barry Rutter of Northern Broadsides.

June – ‘I’m just blocking out Gilgamesh for Tim Supple to then convert to stage

action’ (Letter to KS) Phèdre produced

(Malvern Literary Festival and Almeida):

‘I heard one woman say “I wouldn’t like

to be Diana Rigg and have to go through all that again tonight”’

(Conversation with AS, September) October – Birthday Letters wins

Forward Prize for Poetry; appointed member of the Queen’s Order of Merit.

28 October – Ted Hughes dies.

January – Birthday Letters wins T.S.

Eliot Prize for Poetry, the South Bank Award for Literature, the Whitbread Prize for Poetry and the Book of the Year prize.

Tales from Ovid opens at Swan theatre,

Stratford.

13 May – Memorial Service at Westminster Abbey.

December – Oresteia performed at

National Theatre International conference on Hughes planned for Lyon in February 2000.

In his address at the Memorial Service for Ted Hughes at ster Abbey, Seamus Heaney claimed that as DNA is the genetic codefor the human body, so myth is the poetic code for the human spirit.

Westmin-By myth he meant not only the great body of named myths we have inherited from the ancient world, but any imaginative work that consciously or unconsciously takes on an identifiably mythicshape

The choice of mythic subject matter or imagery is, of course, noguarantee of the release of ‘mythic imagination’ Myth can be used as

a short-cut to prefabricated ‘profundity’ (Star Wars); it can

degener-ate into fantasy (Tolkien); it can seduce a genuine poet to infldegener-ate histhemes into cosmic incomprehensibility (Blake) Hughes writes:Obviously many poems take myths as their subject matter, or

make an image of a subjective event, without earning the

description ‘visionary’, let alone ‘mythic’ It is only when theimage opens inwardly towards what we recognize as a first-handas-if-religious experience, or mystical revelation, that we call it

‘visionary’, and when ‘personalities’ or creatures are involved,

we call it ‘mythic’ (Shakespeare, rev edn 35)

The ancient myths have stayed alive, and new or recycled myths willforever be created precisely because of myth’s continuing power to

‘open inwardly’ in this way, giving access to subjective experience in

a way that makes it not only easier to understand and handle, butalso, by giving it a context of accumulated human experience and agrounding in the permanent features of the human psyche, easier tocommunicate It does not allow the reader, as some ‘confessional’poetry does, to stand aside from the recorded experience, regard-ing it as unique to the unbalanced, even in some cases psychotic,

The Mythic Imagination

subjectivity of the poet For Hughes the greatest exemplars of suchmythic imagination in English are Shakespeare, Coleridge and Eliot.

The disease

The history of Western civilization has been the history of man’sincreasingly devastating crimes against Nature, Nature defined notonly as the earth and its life forms, powers and processes, but also asthe female in all its manifestations, and as the ‘natural man’ withinthe individual psyche It is the story of Man’s mutilation of Nature inhis attempt to make it conform to the procrustean bed of his ownpatriarchal, anthropocentric and rectilinear thinking In his review of

Max Nicholson’s The Environmental Revolution Hughes firmly linked

the ecological crisis to the role of the poet and to the myth that sumes all other myths, the myth of the quest

sub-The story of the mind exiled from Nature is the story of ern Man It is the story of his progressively more desperatesearch for mechanical and rational and symbolic securities,which will substitute for the spirit-confidence of the Nature hehas lost The basic myth for the ideal Westerner’s life is theQuest The quest for a marriage in the soul or a physical re-conquest The lost life must be captured somehow It is thestory of spiritual romanticism and heroic technologicalprogress It is a story of decline When something abandonsNature, or is abandoned by Nature, it has lost touch with its

West-creator, and is called an evolutionary dead-end (WP 129)

Man will always live by myths, true or false But the twin myths ofReformed Christianity and technological progress (supporting eachother in their fanatical rejection of Nature) have proved to be falsebecause they involve hubristic lies about the supremacy of Man toNature In the first of his two ‘Myth and Education’ essays, Hughesanalyses, for example, the false myth of St George and the Dragon, arecipe for disaster (first kill the dragon; ask questions later, if at all),since the dragon is Nature

The most important role for the poet is to challenge the falsemyths we all live by and offer true myths which involve the inwardjourney and the painful acquisition of self-knowledge, which illumi-nate and purge the dark interior, and which help us to discover ‘aproper knowledge of the sacred wholeness of Nature, and a properalignment of our behaviour within her laws’ (or, as Hughes put itelsewhere, ‘to realign our extreme, exclusive attitude with our naturalenvironment and our natural biological supply of life’):

When the modern mediumistic artist looks into his crystal, hesees always the same thing He sees the last nightmare of men-tal disintegration and spiritual emptiness … This is the soul-state of our civilization But he may see something else He maysee a vision of the real Eden, ‘excellent as at the first day’, thedraughty radiant Paradise of the animals, which is the actualearth, in the actual Universe: he may see Pan, the vital, some-what terrible spirit of natural life, which is new in every second.Even when it is poisoned to the point of death, its efforts to beitself are new in every second This is what will survive, if any-thing can And this is the soul-state of the new world But whilethe mice in the field are listening to the Universe, and moving

in the body of nature, where every living cell is sacred to everyother, and all are interdependent, the Developer is peering atthe field through a visor, and behind him stands the wholearmy of madmen’s ideas, and shareholders, impatient to cash in

the world (WP 130)

All the quest myths, however far the quest hero may travel, endwhere he started, under his own coat They are internal voyages ofself-discovery The quest myth that most deeply influenced Hughes

was The Conference of the Birds, in which the questing hero, the

hoopoe, together with the ragged remnant of his band of birds,arrives finally at the mountain-top where the fabulous Simmurgh is

to reveal the secret of it all But the Simmurgh can tell them nothingthey do not know already, and reveals himself to be but a mirror orconflation of themselves Yet their journey and sufferings have notbeen in vain, since they return sadder and wiser birds, bearing

healing truths for those who had stayed behind or fallen by the side.

way-It could be argued that a ‘living myth’ is not a new myth but a

rediscovery and release of the power of the oldest myths In The Myth

of the Goddess Baring and Cashford write:

Nature is no longer experienced as source but as adversary, anddarkness is no longer a mode of divine being, as it was in thelunar cycles, but a mode of being devoid of divinity and activelyhostile, devouring of light, clarity and order The only placewhere the voice of the old order breaks through, though so dis-guised as to be barely recognizable, is where the inspiration ofpoetry re-animates the old mythic images (298)

The old order breaks through, either by consciously reanimating theold mythic images or by allowing them to well up from the depths ofthe psyche, in a surprisingly high proportion of the greatest imagina-tive writers of our tradition It is ‘barely recognizable’ today onlybecause we have been conditioned not to recognize what is staring us

in the face So Auden looked at the great body of mythic imagerywithin and behind Yeats and called it mere silliness

Do you remember that article about Yeats in the Kenyon Review,

where Auden dismissed the whole of Eastern mystical and gious philosophy, the whole tradition of Hermetic Magic(which is a good part of Jewish Mystical philosophy, not tospeak of the mystical philosophy of the Renaissance), the wholehistorical exploration into spirit life at every level of conscious-ness, the whole deposit of earlier and other religion, myth,vision, traditional wisdom and story in folk belief, on whichYeats based all his work, everything he did or attempted to bring

reli-about, as ‘embarrassing nonsense’? (TH to KS, 30 August 1979)

And Philip Larkin gazed blankly at the ‘common myth-kitty’ and missed it as irrelevant to his own or any other poet’s concerns, thuscastrating his own poetry and criticism His best poems are about hisdesperate need for the spiritual healing he allowed his lesser self tospurn

dis-What has kept the old consciousness alive through the thousands

of years of its gradual rejection and persecution, in spite of the eration of the beliefs and rituals of nature religions and the totaldesacralization of modern life in the West, has been art, myth and,especially, poetic literature That ancient vision of atonement is pre-served in myth, and both preserved and perennially recreated in art.The purpose of art is to preserve it, and imaginative art cannot dootherwise, since the very nature of the creative imagination is holis-tic; its primary function is to make connections, discover relation-ships, patterns, systems and wholes

oblit-There is now widespread agreement that we must try to develop anew holistic, biocentric vision incorporating the latest insights ofimaginative (and computerized) science This can be attempted intwo ways, through deep ecology and through imaginative art In thework of Ted Hughes they are essentially the same

Imagination

Imagination seeks to respiritualize Nature, to heal the split in thehuman psyche, replacing anthropocentric with biocentric conscious-ness, to provide the only viable religion for the new millennium

A work of imagination shares with a living creature or the tem itself the characteristic of not being reducible to its parts, orexplicable in terms of the technique of its manufacture It cannot beexhausted by analysis It is a system of interrelationships which, since

ecosys-it extends far beyond the words on the page, engages wecosys-ith everythingelse in the reader’s conscious and unconscious experience, and istherefore virtually infinite It is a microcosm, a model of the universe.The living poem is the opposite of a well-wrought urn (or billiard-ball in Lawrence’s comic terminology) complete in itself; it sends outcountless roots and tendrils, ripples, shock-waves, shrapnel, grapnels,

to touch, engage, disturb, grapple with the world, and with a ent matrix of experiences, beliefs, values, psycho-biological make-up,

differ-in each reader In relation to Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being Hughes wrote: ‘I want my readers to approach it with the